Giurgiulena

Toasted sesame set in cooked honey and cut into strips while still warm.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains honey.

Ingredients

• 300 g sesame seeds
• 100 g almonds, chopped
• 250 g honey
• 80 g caster sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

1. Toast the sesame in a dry pan over a medium heat, moving it constantly, for 5 minutes until it smells nutty and a few seeds start to jump. Toast the almonds the same way.
2. Warm the honey and sugar in a heavy pan to 145C, stirring. That temperature is the whole recipe: lower and it stays chewy, higher and it sets hard enough to break a tooth.
3. Stir in the sesame, almonds, zest and cinnamon off the heat.
4. Tip onto wetted baking paper and press out to 1 cm with a wet rolling pin.
5. CUT IT WHILE IT IS STILL WARM, into diamonds or strips. Cold, it shatters wherever it likes rather than where the knife goes, and the window is about four minutes.
6. Leave to set hard, then keep in a tin between sheets of paper. It softens in a damp kitchen.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes